About Us

Our History

Oncology Venture A/S was founded in 2004 by Professor Emeritus Steen Knudsen, who has a background within the mathematics of bioinformatics. At the time, the company was named Medical Prognosis Institute A/S.

Steen Knudsen is educated at DTU, Denmark’s Technical University, as Master of Science in Engineering, specialized in Bio Technology. Furthermore, Knudsen holds a PhD in Microbiology from University of Copenhagen, and a position as Post Doctor in Computing Research Resources within Molecular Biology at Harvard Medical School. Since 1996, Knudsen has been part of building the Center for Biological Sequence Analysis at DTU, Denmark’s Technical University. Based on bioinformatics, his research clarified the potential of using genetic chips in fighting cancer. In 2002, Steen was appointed professor for his research within this field.

To make the software technology (the mathematical algorithm) which is applied to the data from the gene chip beneficial for cancer patients, authority approval and marketing approval was needed. For this purpose, Knudsen founded MPI in 2004, as a spin out from DTU and with DTU Innovation A/S as the primary investor. The software technology, based on data from the gene chips, offered possibilities within many different fields.

Therefore, the first focus of Oncology Venture A/S was to identify which specific clinical uses of the software were most promising to be commercialized. Supported by surveys among oncological experts, on the need for a sufficient number of patients, Steen Knudsen chose in 2005 to focus on prognostics for Lung Cancer.

In further developing the software, Steen Knudsen made an important discovery. By comparing data from the National Cancer Institute, USA, Oncology Venture could predict which patients would get a positive effect from chemotherapy. In 2006 Oncology Venture submitted a patent application, which was approved by the American patent authorities in 2013.

In 2012, Peter Buhl Jensen became the CEO to enhance the oncological width and further prepare the organization for international commercialization.

The initial strategy was as a service provider to sell DRP® to pharma/biotech to be used for drug development. During the past years, Oncology Venture has focused on drug development, including strategy and business model for establishing co-operation agreements with drug development and biotech companies regarding research, development and commercialization of drug candidates.

About Oncology Venture

Creating spinout Oncology Venture Sweden AB

To prove and establish the technology and to gain as much as possible from the value increase, the choice in 2015 was to form Oncology Venture Sweden AB, aiming to develop drug candidates by using the DRP® technology. Oncology Venture would use the DRP® technology, where it had the potential to increase the likeliness of success, shorten the time to market, lower development costs and extend the drug’s time on the market under the protection of a patent. Oncology Venture Sweden AB was listed on the Swedish stock exchange, Spotlight, then known as AktieTorget.

Merger of Oncology Venture A/S and Oncology Venture Sweden AB

In 2018, the original parent company, Oncology Venture A/S, was merged with the spin out Oncology Venture Sweden A/S. The merger followed a situation where the two companies had become each other’s most important strategic partners.

Creation of Special Purpose Vehicles

When searching for products to develop the Oncology Venture team realized there were more products than anticipated. As a consequence, the company has adapted its strategy and has now established Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) where the DRP® technology is out-licensed, called Oncology Venture US, Inc. and OV-SPV2. Thereby it will be possible to attract new capital for more development projects without stressing Oncology Venture’s finances.